Blair was urged to delay rights for new EU workers, files reveal | Global News Avenue

Newly released documents show that at the time of EU enlargement in 2004, senior ministers urged then-prime minister Tony Blair to delay granting employment rights to workers in eastern and central Europe.

In February of the same year, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw pointed out that the UK was the only one of the larger EU members to make “concessions”.

The concession means people from Poland and other new EU countries will be able to work in the UK after 1 May.

Almost all other major powers will not allow this for two years: only Italy has not yet decided. In addition to Ireland, smaller EU countries also have work permit schemes that limit the number of people allowed.

Documents from the National Archives – now released and 20 years old – show Straw advised Britain to delay for six months.

“I believe we could be facing a very difficult situation at the beginning of May,” he said.

He warned that Britain could be “forced to withdraw concessions under the most unfavorable circumstances”.

His letter was copied to other senior ministers and then-Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott backed Straw.

Prescott wrote that he was “very concerned” about the potential impact on social housing.

He also worries that many workers will come to London and the south-east and will be unable to find decent housing and will “have to share overcrowded housing in poor conditions”.

But the then home secretary, David Blunkett, argued that the economy needed the “flexibility and productivity” these new workers could provide.

In 2004, eight Eastern and Central European countries, including Poland, joined the EU. According to the government, Over the next decade, the number of Polish nationals living in the UK increased from approximately 69,000 to approximately 853,000.

Blair asked whether work permits could be obtained in the UK, but the Home Office quickly set up a “worker registration scheme”.

The program requires A8 workers (workers from the eight new member states) to pay a fee and register their employment in specific jobs. Failure to do so will result in heavy fines.

Since May 2004, Number 10 has been monitoring these registration figures every week.

The government is particularly worried because it publicly estimates that only 13,000 new workers will come to the UK each year after EU enlargement.

Documents show Kate Gross, one of No 10’s private secretaries, wrote to the Prime Minister on July 2, 2004.

She attached a briefing note to the media, which stated that “the influx of new immigrants predicted by the media has simply not arrived,” although the number has exceeded 13,000.

She explained that while 24,000 people had signed up for the scheme, the majority had been living in the UK until 1 May.

The memo from Kate Gross noted that most were young, aged 18-34, and that there was no evidence they were “taking advantage of the welfare system.” Blair scrawled “This is the point” alongside the statement.

However, Kate Gross pointed out that “the key elephant trap is how these numbers relate to previous HO (Home Office) forecasts”.

If applications continue to increase, “the number of new immigrants will reach 50-60,000 by May 2005,” she wrote.

The next set of figures for the scheme showed a decline, while a briefing note to No 10 said: “It looks like we are past the peak application period.”

The Immigration and Nationality Agency “should be congratulated for the short time it took to implement the worker registration scheme,” the report said.

The problem is, the program doesn’t provide accurate records.

For example, self-employed people do not have to register, which excludes many construction workers such as carpenters.

And there was little execution.

Flaws in the worker registration scheme were exposed in late 2005, when there were only 95 Polish plumbers in the UK, according to WRS figures.

Within 24 hours, the Daily Mail identified 95 Polish plumbers in London alone.

Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of A8 nationals, mostly Poles, immigrated to Britain.

Although many have now returned, the 2021 Census showed that 743,000 Polish-born people lived in the UK.